The Countdown

[Dragon Lady]

Dang! My avatar was hosted on Board 4.0 and it's now gone. [sigh] Time to go find another copy of it...

6 KB?! Who thought that having an avatar limit of 6 KB was a good idea? And how did you all get your avatars to look so much better than mine and still be under 6 KB?

[Gimgimno]

Isn't it for all of us? Thusly, I suppose I shall retire.

Oh no! This is terrible news!.....

....who were you, again?

oh snap!

[Laser Jock]

Yes, they'll keep updating all day long. Live posting. Woohoo for destroying productivity! The home page will show the last 48 hours.

Note, however, that you can also see them a day at a time if you still want that. There are two ways: first of all, there's a day-at-a-time RSS feed (which shows both questions AND answers!), which you can subscribe to (e.g., with Google Reader). Secondly, you can also look in the archives and read the questions that reached 100 hours (and posted) on the previous day, which is the same as what used to show up on the front page.

[Laser Jock]

Dang! My avatar was hosted on Board 4.0 and it's now gone. [sigh] Time to go find another copy of it...

6 KB?! Who thought that having an avatar limit of 6 KB was a good idea? And how did you all get your avatars to look so much better than mine and still be under 6 KB?

Hah, mine was too. I'll go fix that.

And believe it or not, having a low size for the avatars is a good idea. It helps keep bandwidth costs lower; since avatars are on pretty much every page (and each user has a different one, and lots of people see them), they can add up somewhat quickly. It doesn't have to be 6 kB, though; if people want a larger limit that can be changed. It'll just up bandwidth costs slightly. (I can figure how much if people care.)

[thebigcheese]

OOOOH. Good work guys.

Totally random question: since questions now post at the 100 hour mark, does that mean they will now post on Sundays?

[Gimgimno]

I think so, yes. If they hit 100 hours on Sunday, they should still post.

[thebigcheese]

Another question: what do the different colored progress bars mean? I have a red one and a yellow one on my pending questions. And the stars?

Forgive me if I missed the explanation for this somewhere...

[Yellow]

Heh. Congratulations! You found a bug!

So the colored bars and the stars are actually for internal use; they show the status of the question.

For the colored bars: Red means unanswered, orange means partially answered (someone has written an answer, but nobody has declared the question done), yellow means answered but not yet approved for posting, and green means all done, just waiting for 100 hours to come around. (Further answers could still be added after it goes green.) There's a key for all of this in the question inbox, but obviously you don't have access to that.

For the stars: it's a link that lets writers keep track of questions they want to come back to later. For readers, it does absolutely nothing.

Obviously, since the star does nothing for readers, we shouldn't be showing it to you. We hadn't intended for the colored bars to be visible either; we'll have to evaluate what we want to do there. It could be fun for readers to see that, but we'd also rather not have to deal with emails from readers like "Hey, my question is at 90 hours and it's still red! Aren't you going to answer it???!?" You can see why that would be annoying. (And yes, we do get emails similar to this.)

Anyway, there will probably be more bugs found in the coming days. If you find things aren't working like you'd expect, or especially if you find that you have access to information that you don't think you should, please let us know. You can email me at [email protected]. One of the most exciting things about Board 5.0 is that it's 100x easier to fix problems like this without breaking other parts of the website, so you're a lot more likely to see things get fixed a lot faster, and you're more likely to see new features crop up from time to time.

[Foreman]

Just so everyone knows, CPM and Yellow now get all the props ever. Yes, even more than Hypatia did for her awesome A/C answer. This was a ridiculous amount of work that was pulled off in such a classy manner that they deserve kudos (the congratulatory kind and the chocolate kind) from all of us.

Though I suppose most of the best changes are on the writer side (but readers do benefit). Trust me, guys...it's neat.

[Dragon Lady]

Laser Jock deserves some credit, too.

But hooray for no longer being a Board 5.0 widow! Heartless Siren agrees.

[Sky Bones]

Hooray!! I tip my hat and even give a little bow to CPM, Yellow, and LJ. Excellent work!

Though, Dragon Lady, don't celebrate too soon the bugs are popping up as we type... (though hopefully they'll be few and far between).

[Marduk]

If I thought there was the slightest chance that either of them would take me up on it, I'd offer dinner.

[C is for]

Dang! My avatar was hosted on Board 4.0 and it's now gone. [sigh] Time to go find another copy of it...

6 KB?! Who thought that having an avatar limit of 6 KB was a good idea? And how did you all get your avatars to look so much better than mine and still be under 6 KB?

I thought about fixing this a while ago, but didn't know what I was doing so decided I'd better not. Then I forgot to bring it up with Laser Jock, so I'm glad someone remembered to. Mine looks pretty squished too, compared to the original. But it's okay.

Dude, Commander Keen, sorry for not explicitly including you in the post about chopping 10% of your posts. Of course you are also included.

I was too tired to cut anything last night, and I was also too tired to do more than glance at Board 5.0. I don't remember anything. Woohoo, lots of reading for me this morning!

[Craig Jessop]

I'm very impressed! I have two things that I would like to see fixed (though that might not be ther right word). First, the text of the question is stuck underneath the bar to the side (the one with "home" "I'm Board" etc). Second, is there going to be a mobile site soon? I like to read the Board on my phone during down moments at work.

[Emiliana]

Yellow and CPM, major props!

[Gimgimno]

I'm very impressed! I have two things that I would like to see fixed (though that might not be ther right word). First, the text of the question is stuck underneath the bar to the side (the one with "home" "I'm Board" etc). Second, is there going to be a mobile site soon? I like to read the Board on my phone during down moments at work.

Just RSS it. That's one of the best things about 5.0, is that it's all RSS-compatible now.

[thebigcheese]

I've never used an RSS feed. What's a good reader to use?

[NerdGirl]

THIS IS AWESOME!!! I think my favorite part is that questions post all day so I can keep checking it all day for new things to read!

[Laser Jock]

[T]he text of the question is stuck underneath the bar to the side (the one with "home" "I'm Board" etc).

Could you give a link? Also, what browser (including version) are you using, and what operating system? (I haven't seen what you're describing, but certain browsers [*cough* Internet Explorer] can have odd bugs sometimes in how they show a page, so knowing this helps with tracking down the problem.)

[Laser Jock]

I've never used an RSS feed. What's a good reader to use?

If you meant in general, I'd say Google Reader (reader.google.com). If you meant on a mobile device, I can't say (because I don't have one). I explained briefly how to use Google Reader here; if you have any questions, plenty of us here use it, so feel free to ask!